I’ve had my novel, Otherworlders, on KindleScout for nearly a month. Most of that time, I watched it get more and more buried as it went from being a recently added, into the obscurity of some-number-of-days-left. When it left the front page, I felt that I needed to put it out of mind. See, with Kindlescout, there’s no real way to know how your story is doing. They don’t tell you how many nominations you’ve had or any updates at all. If I kept checking on it, I knew I’d go insane.

So I let it be.

But, that was a mistake. I returned to check on it after a while and was saddened to see that it hadn’t been ‘discovered’ and tearing up the charts. It was the final week, and I knew that I had to give it a push.

How?

First, I began posting in Facebook groups that I’m associated with. There are many Free book and Author promotion groups, some with tens of thousands of members. A lot of the time, people join groups and end up tuning out whenever something new is posted in them. I know I have been guilty of that. And, honestly, I got the best result from the groups that I am actually active in. I limit myself to posting in 3 groups a day, and I’m keeping a list of the ones that I’ve posted in so that I don’t duplicate.***TIP*** It’s tempting to post in as many groups as you can find all at once. But pace yourself! There are a lot of people that are in multiple groups. Nothing will make them NOT want to look at your book more than seeing it plastered on their facebook fifteen times.

Next, I started to post on the KBoards. I looked for conversations that had to do with Kindle Scout, Dystopia, Scifi… and joined in, making sure to give the link to my campaign.

I also looked for other places to recruit readers. I posted the first chapter on Wattpad, Booktrack, and Write On by Kindle, and linked it to my campaign.

I’ve been tempted to make a Facebook event and invite everyone I know to vote for me. I know many people who have done this sort of thing (since I live in Hollywood, half of my facebook activity seems to be people asking me to like their pages or go to their virtual events, and, occasionally, vote for them in something.) I’m on the fence about this one. It might get me a couple more nominations, it might not. I feel strange about bugging people I know. It feels like putting the notice up on my facebook wall should be enough, and if they’re interested they’ll vote. But who’s to say? I may be missing an opportunity here. Maybe on the last day, when I really feel the crunch, I’ll go for it. We’ll see.

And that’s it. Once I put a little effort into promoting the book, I got on the Hot list, and I’ve stayed there for days. I’m hoping it’s not too little too late. But I guess I’ll know soon enough if Amazon decides to publish me.